Efficient testing of software presents one of the biggest challenges for software developers today. As computers and the Internet continue to form the backbone of modern business, commerce, and communication, the importance of having reliable, consistent software has become increasingly more and more critical. Particularly for businesses, errors and bugs in software can lead to losses in revenue, customer dissatisfaction, liability, and other problems. To avoid such issues, developers of software applications, whether hosted on personal computers or on websites, must put the applications through thorough testing before deploying them to users.
Automated testing software makes the process of software testing more efficient and reliable. Such software contains instructions that test software by performing various operations on the software and check for successful execution. Hence, instead of an individual testing out each function of an application manually, the automated testing software can be executed on the application to automatically test the functions, saving valuable time and cost in manual labor.
However, many issues still persist. For example, traditional graphical user interface automation test technologies may not be able to detect visual problems in the graphical user interface of an application. Such test technologies typically locate a target user interface element (UI element) at the backend and interact with it. Results are verified by checking the existence of specific UI elements or the attributes of UI elements, which may ignore a visual defect on the screen that would be apparent to a human user. Hence, a user interface (UI) automation test may be passed even though a page is visually broken as long as the UI elements exist and behave as expected. Further, various applications, such as websites, may have continuously changing content and the UI elements on the user interface of various applications may constantly undergo slight changes in position, making it more difficult for an automated test to identify when a real visual issue exists. A more efficient approach is desirable for visual user interface testing in software applications.